


Forging A Hero

by winslowak



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-29
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-04-11 20:59:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4452143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winslowak/pseuds/winslowak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Come after me" means something different to Jack than to Phryne. Transcontinental communication is hard. Neither Jack or Phryne is the same without the other. <br/>(This piece flows after my last piece (A Modern Man), but they are/can be independent.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forging A Hero

**Author's Note:**

> I started this piece one morning when Brahms’ violin concerto was on the radio and my daughter was explaining a terrible miscommunication that was unfolding via text with her best friend. I love the Brahms (and it strikes me as a very Inspector Robinson type piece), and was struck how telegrams would be so very much like texting, just a lot slower. Then the piece took on a life of its own and it was all I could do to chase it down a manageable path.   
> All fictional characters belong to Kerry Greenwood and Every Cloud Productions. Historical characters have been shoe-horned into events at my pleasure. Bertha Jorgensen was in fact the first female leader of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, which would have celebrated it’s 25th anniversary in 1929 (Jorgensen started in 1923. She played with the MSO for 50 years). Marie Soldat was an exceptional Austrian violinist. Brahms helped to arrange payment for her studies. She was a regular chamber music partner of Brahms’s, and she did introduce his concerto all over Europe, though she never traveled to Australia. Muriel Heagney was an active trade unionist and feminist in Melbourne and abroad. “She was a member of the Victorian central executive of the Labor Party in 1926-27, when she also helped establish the Labor Guild of Youth, and was an unsuccessful candidate in the Boroondara by-election of 1933. Heagney's main endeavour was to establish equal pay for women.” - Australian Dictionary of Biography

“Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.” - Measure for Measure, Shakespeare

Jack is a serious man. A methodical, planful man. He doesn’t see Phryne’s absence as minutes to watch tick by but as a time to bide. To consider, reflect, ruminate. Plan. Achieve. And Jack has been, but he doesn’t seem to be as good at it as he was four months ago, when Phryne left.  
                       
Jack’s strength as an investigator is his ability to not rush. He doesn’t jump to conclusions, he doesn’t miss evidence, and he certainly doesn’t mind sitting in the interview room being patiently (some might say aggressively) silent. Suspects squirm and say things they know they shouldn’t, just for the silence to go away and make the damn detective crack an expression - anything but that endless stare.

If only they knew what was going through Jack’s head during those long minutes. He arranges his face into his immovable detective look, and then enjoys a good think.

That is what Jack is doing now. The young reprobate sulking across from him won’t last long before his story comes gushing out in a vitriolic, supercilious diatribe (I’m not a criminal, I’m a misunderstood hero!). Jack knows this speech well. The young ones are all dying to crow over their cleverness and blame their cohorts. All Jack had needed to do was suggest the young genius had been the one to botch the operation. Now he will let time do the work.

Jack settles in and muses over what to do with his awful new constable. Maybe he could engineer a trade with City North. He likes their recent recruit, but it will be tricky to convince them it’s an advantageous swap. It almost makes him regret getting that promotion for Collins. Now that Collins is a senior constable, he takes on much more of the station’s field work, leaving Jack behind his desk with mounds of paperwork and an untrainable half-wit - the worst of all worlds.

He needs to check with Mac to see if she’s still available for dinner before they go to the concert tonight. If Collins were at the front desk, he’d just write a note, call him in, and have him take care of it as if it were case-critical. But when he’d tried that with Not-Collins, Not-Collins returned to the interview room to blather, in front of a quickly highly amused suspect: “Dr. MacMillan says, hang on, I have exactly what she said…she says to ‘come by at 6, I just got a new shipment of some American brown plaid’ - Gosh, sir, what’s that? well, anyway, she says that ‘Inspector Robinson absolutely needs to try it. As his doctor, I insist upon it for his constitution’. Gee, sir, I hope you feel better soon.” After which, Jack had had to dismiss the suspect, who’d brazenly winked and called “To your health, Inspector!” as he swaggered out the door. So no more of that. He’d call Mac himself.

Jack tries to think of the next thing on his list, but - and this was what has been happening more and more frequently - he gets derailed. Seeing Mac tonight means that he might get new news about Phryne. He hasn’t heard from her in over a week - that can’t bode well. Jack’s palms itch.

Jack and Phryne’s correspondence during her absence has been uneven. Jack is an excellent letter writer; he loves carefully crafting them, shaping each line until he can hear in his head her bark of laughter or snort of derision or even a quick repartee. His interview pad is littered with notes to himself of ideas and quotes that he doesn’t want to forget to include in his next letter. He favors long descriptive dispatches filled with meaty stories of his investigations and tales of his exploits with her crowd - crashing a meeting of her Adventurers Club, attending a rally for equal pay for women with Muriel Heagney (by-stander status only, so far). He tells her about putting flowers at Janey’s grave on her birthday, and spending Sunday afternoons in Collingwood, forming a biking club for boys. He includes a pressed flower or postcard drawing or a trinket in every envelope. In his last letter, he sent her a picture of him with a chorus line of women ski-jumpers he met on top of a mountain. His next letter will finally divulge his biggest project to date: learning to fly. He hasn’t particularly enjoyed it, but he’s proficient.

For Jack, each letter is confirmation that he is, indeed, coming after her. He can’t sail to England and won’t be an appendage to her, nor be one more collected soul added to her coterie-cum-family. But he can be the best he knows how, and all she’s ever inspired in him. He can be her partner and her rock. He can be the magnet for her compass that guides her back home. However, Phryne’s compass seems to be impervious to his magnetic pull, and Jack is growing alarmed. Anxious. He’s started to second guess his plan.

Phryne favors telegrams, with an occasional letter that Jack finds wholly unsatisfactory. Her last telegram had been awful (“Met the most extraordinary man. Mountaineering in Scotland for a week.” - is she purposefully baiting him…or worse?) but no more terrible than the long drought he’d suffered the previous three weeks (yes, he knows exactly how excruciating a long, forced silence can be). Every alternative is bad. Silence? He panics. Telegram? He feels shortchanged and abandoned. Chatty letter? He aches with loneliness. Second-hand news? He imagines serial lovers and flagrant affairs - and feels abandoned, shortchanged and lonely - then panics.

Jack rasps his hands on his knees. Who is this extraordinary mountaineer? Phryne should have returned from Scotland by now - why hasn’t she telegrammed? What are they doing if they’re not on a mountain? Why can’t he stop thinking about it?  

Jack kicks the table leg, and ejects himself out of his chair to pace the room. The surprised suspect stammers and starts in on a heart-felt confession. Several sentences in he realizes that the inspector is not paying any attention whatsoever, and deftly shifts stories. When Jack finally registers what’s happened, he draws a deep, steadying breath, thanks the young miscreant for his time and watches him saunter out. He then presses his forehead into the wall and slams his hands above his head hard enough that the door stutters in its frame. He strides to his office, firmly but gently closes its door. He takes out paper work; within five minutes he’s broken three pen tips. Jack grabs his coat and hat and tells Not-Collins he has a pressing appointment.

One of the happier developments since Phryne’s departure has been Jack’s several nights a week boxing bouts with Collins. Collins is very good, and Jack has enjoyed learning a new sport. It’s also the perfect distraction from the fact that he is not sitting in Miss Fisher’s parlor, drinking Mr. B’s exquisitely mixed drinks, and verbally boxing with his favorite sparring partner of all, Phryne.

The boxing is a much needed outlet; Collins has withstood progressively more punishing matches as the weeks have worn on. Every day that passes, Jack regrets more intensely that he didn’t act faster, more decisively, less cautiously when he’d had Phryne at his fingertips. He knew she’d swoop out of his life, just as she had swooped in. The recklessness he wishes he’d given into is now on flagrant display in the ring, and evidenced by the welts and bruises that cover Jack’s and Collins’ torsos. (Dottie, while initially delighted to get Hugh out of the house so she could pursue the multiple classes she’s taking and women’s groups she’s joined, has mounting concern for the Inspector’s mental state and outrage for the offenses against her husband’s physique.)

Jack heads to the boxing club now, in the middle of the afternoon. He’s eager to strip off his policeman clothes and put on the boxing trunks, which he feels let him properly unleash his ever more profound irritation. He hates that this anger is leaping out at odd moments, that he can’t contain it, that it’s affecting his work, infecting everything. His behavior today in the interview room was a travesty; he’s burning with shame. He’s horrified by his utter helplessness in the face of these emotions. When he came back to Phryne those months ago, after walling her off and trying desperately to cauterize the surging artery she’d opened within him, it had been the most terrifying thing he’d ever done. It’s changed him permanently. Letting the emotions run free has altered the chemistry in his brain and rearranged the layers of his heart. But like Pandora’s box, once opened it could not be closed. The same artery that had carried the beautiful, happy, silly, lovely emotions he’d learned to show with Phryne now flows with pain and a raging impotence in her absence.

The gymnasium is filled with heavyweights and brutes - not Jack’s regular crowd. He welcomes the challenge and the change from Collins, who, Jack’s sure, has never let him feel the full extent of his prodigious strength. He takes the first available partner and dances him around the ring, bobbing back and forth, throwing punches and ducking swings. He’s on fire, he’s everywhere at once and he feels sublime, all parts of his brain and body are working in unison and they’re winning. The sweat is spraying, his gloves are slick with it, his eyes are stinging with it, but he doesn’t need to see because he can feel everything perfectly and it’s all such a crying relief. There’s a moment when all action freezes before him - he’s stepping forward, coiling his right arm, his opponent’s eyes are widening and his left arm is rising to block, but Jack knows it’s too slow. In that frozen tableau of imminent satisfaction when Jack’s glove will connect with his foe, Jack realizes exactly how he has been playing Phryne’s absence wrong. All the puzzle pieces that have been jumbling his head - Phryne’s “Come after me!”, his elation, her ambiguous missives, his confusion, her teasing, his depression, all rearrange themselves and fall into place. Jack knows what to do.

The blow lands exactly as Jack knew it would, and ends the match. Jack is as solicitous as the man will allow him to be, but Jack leaves the gymnasium as quickly as possible.

Instead of calling Mac, he swings by the morgue. He’s already dressed for the evening. For the first time in weeks, he doesn’t feel like there’s lead boiling in his gut when he walks in. Besides his office, the city morgue is the place where he still reflexively listens for Phryne’s heels on the tile and waits for the smell of her perfume to hit him just as he hears her breezy “Hello, Jack!”. The inevitable anticipation and certain disappointment wring him out every time he has to make the trip. But today he is at ease striding to Mac’s office, with no more complicated thought in his head than to lure the doctor out early for a drink before dinner.

Mac sees Jack’s unmistakable silhouette in the frosted window of her office door, and grimaces. Why is he here so early? Either it’s professional, which means the concert tonight is wasted, or he wants to meet early, and Mac just doesn’t know if she has the wherewithal to withstand it. Jack has been relying more and more on Mac to reassure him that Phryne won’t be seduced by Europe’s high-octane culture, or worse, by one of its leading men. Mac is getting sick of it, and has started suggesting, obliquely, that Phryne might be right to stay away. Mac applauds Jack’s new-found enthusiasm for adventure and has even teamed up with him in a joint effort of the police force and the hospital for lost and abused girls. But when it’s just the two of them, Jack has found Mac to be an exceedingly easy ear, and the normally taciturn Inspector finds a relief in unburdening to her that he can’t resist. Mac’s patience has been wearing thin. She sympathizes, but, in the end, Jack should know better. No amount of insistence from Mac of Phryne’s special brand of constancy will help him if Jack doesn’t know it himself. So she comforts him, distracts him, and plies him with excellent bootleg American scotch. Maybe it’s time for a different sort of medicine, though. Mac will join him for dinner tonight, but she might hint it will be their last if Jack can’t pull himself together.

Jack knows he’s been overstepping his bounds with the doctor. It’s just one more indication that his feelings have been overriding his judgement in a way he hasn't been able to control. He doesn’t like it. The concert and dinner tonight are Jack’s way of saying thank you. It’s Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s 25th anniversary and they’re playing Jack’s favorite piece, Brahms’ violin concerto. Marie Soldat, the woman who introduced the concerto to the world, has come out of retirement just for this concert, as a special favor to Bertha Jorgensen, the orchestra’s concertmaster. Jack loves the Brahms, Mac has a crush on Miss Jorgensen; it should be an excellent evening for both of them. And with his new-found peace of mind, the evening promises to be even better than anticipated.

He opens Mac’s door with a swoosh and a grin, strides to Mac’s desk, which he grips to lean across, and says in his best policeman voice, “Mac, whatever it is you're working on, I’m sure it’s done well enough. You can stop to powder your nose, but our evening is starting now.”

Mac is not slow on the uptake. Here is the old Jack, but new and improved. That glass of scotch suddenly looks quite inviting, now that there’s sure to be a good story attached. Something is afoot, and it looks promising. Grabbing her fedora, she says, “Far be it for me to contradict an order from an officer of the law. Take me away.”

The concert is as excellent as anticipated, but what makes it truly superb for Jack is turning his mind freely to his new plan. Mac had given it her vote of approval over dinner, and pledged her help and support. Tomorrow, Jack would pay a call to Mrs. Collins, whose cooperation and assistance would be critical. The music flows through him, raising goosebumps on his neck when the soaring melody is picked up by the solo violin. Phryne is not much one for the symphony, which is a shame, Jack thinks. The piece is Phryne set to music - dramatic and classy, big, bold, tempestuous, but smooth and sensual. For Jack, it is mesmerizing and enchanting and makes his nerves tingle. He hasn’t felt this way since Dottie’s wedding, when he’d sat so close to Phryne without being able to touch her that he felt like his skin was on fire. Jack is relieved to be sorted out, to think of Phryne with excitement and anticipation, not hurt and confusion. He has a direction. His is, once again, a man with a plan.

**************************  
Phryne is on a train, heading south out of Scotland. Across from her is a dapper “mountaineer” whose agility at talking far outshines his aptitude on a mountain. She has her book clutched in her lap, but has been unable to read it due to her excruciatingly obtuse traveling companion, who blithely ignores every hint she throws at him, including the bald statement “I believe I will turn to my book now”. Extraordinary man, indeed, she thinks.

But instead of picking up her book, she looks outside the window at the rails that run into the horizon. She imagines the train carrying her south and south and south, past London, over the oceans, across Antarctica, around and back north to Australia. Phryne has never had an opportunity to be homesick - it’s something she’s always thought she was too carefully carefree to bother with. Now Phryne thinks that she’s never before had a home worth being sick for.

Where is Jack? Why hasn’t he come? She has sent him every manner of telegram, all saying Where Are You, You Should Be Here. Look at the ridiculous things she’s resorted to! Traveling for a week with an intensely irritating man - and for what? Not one peep of protest or curiosity from Jack, despite meticulously leaving a clear path of crumbs to her doorstep. His letters are lovely, but they make her sad beyond measure. Why can’t he send her a telegram saying “I’m here”? That would do perfectly. How can he go on with his life so gaily - so fully! - without her? This rampant exploration he’s doing…it’s exciting, yes, but…she wants him to do it with her. She leans her head against the glass, and it thumps the staccato beat of the train. It’s aggravating, but she can’t bother to lift her head up. Her energy is completely sapped; she wonders if her chemical composition could have changed. It’s this terrible greyness, she thinks. It’s turning me grey. Where is her combustibility, her ability to create one delectable chain reaction after another? She feels inert, yet unstable. Jack, she thinks. You are my missing electron. She closes her eyes and dreams she’s looking at Jack through the wrong end of a telescope. He’s tiny, dressed in a lab coat, mixing glowing blue potions, and he can’t see her at all.

When Phryne steps onto the platform at King’s Cross, her hat is uncharacteristically askew, and, instead of her trademark entrance - head high, eyes bright - she is listless. Porters walk past her to offer their services to other ladies, sweethearts brush against her to reach their returned beloveds; she’s invisible. She stands alone, looking about her, slightly bewildered, wondering what to do next. It hardly seems to matter. And there, in the thinning crowd, a beam of light making him look like Gabriel himself (of course, she thinks crossly), is her father.

“Ah, Phryne my dear. I hope your journey was pleasant. No no, I’m fine, I need nothing at all. I’ve come on an errand for you. Let me take you to your hotel.”

There unfolds a sequence of events that Phryne can barely grasp. At the hotel, her mother oversees the packing of her trunks while depositing Phryne in a hot tub. Her father orders dinner. Her mother dresses her in a fresh traveling costume. Both parents contrive to feed her. It’s a masterful balletic performance that concludes with all of them in a car, driving to the docks of the P&O line, heading for Melbourne.

The journey is blissfully peaceful. Phryne spends her time on deck wrapped in a fur, reading Jack’s letters over and over, or watching the waves as she sorts through all the steps he must have taken to orchestrate this most masterful deliverance. Leave it to Jack to perform the most essential and dramatic rescue of her life — all from his desk.

*****************  
Despite thirty-five days to script his welcoming lines to Phryne, Jack has steadfastly refused to do so. Instead, he has bought a new tie. He has arranged an as-of-yet-undetermined length of absence from City South. Otherwise unencumbered by plans or ceremony, he stands at the dock watching Phryne’s ship draw near. He is still and quiet, yet he feels the electricity crackling around him. It grows stronger as Phryne gets closer, until he sees her at the railing and his entire body shivers with a jolt of adrenaline.

Phryne has been standing sentinel on the bow quarter since day break. The sun came up in a shock of blistering red over a gold and violet sea. The sky ran from vermillion to magenta to rose to canary and now at midday is an endless blue. The ship enters the harbor and all around her, color is exploding in waves, she’s washed in it, and for the first time in months she feels clean. Her head is clear, her eyes are sharp. She touches the sparkling blue swallow on her scarf — and then she sees Jack, his coat flashing red in the breeze. His brown fedora, bless that hat, is low over his eyes but cannot shield the glow she sees there. Her calves twitch, her toes wiggle, her stomach clenches and her fingers grip the railing. She leans as far over as she can and flings her arms out with a long loud cry: “Hello, Australia!” - but her eyes are locked on Jack’s, and Jack is laughing up at her, his face as open and inviting as the whole wide sky.

As soon as the boat is pressed against its mooring, Phryne unleashes an enormous sack of confetti. Thousands of bits of shiny paper glitter and wink as they rain down on Jack, colorful kisses from invisible angels doing Phryne’s bidding until she can do it herself.  

Jack stands under the deluge, a collage of brilliant, gaudy dots. He is ready.


End file.
